Landscape of the soul

Though the book is squeaky clean, it takes a brave woman to talk about love, gender and social politics so openly.

The cover has attitude. Oodles of it. A pink-skinned young woman with a bright magenta mouth, sporting pink glares and with a headscarf dotted with tiny pink hearts and camels. The background, if possible, gets even pinker! This ensemble could fool you into expecting candy-floss chick-lit but that's where you're likely to be mistaken. For chick-lit it is and memoir too, but Love in a Headscarf by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is so much more.

The theme is simple and linear, as firmly stated on the cover: Muslim woman seeks the One. As the eligible young Muslim woman telling her story of the big search, Shelina embarks on an endless quest for the perfect life partner and the reader is taken on a wild and hilarious roller-coaster ride. This is a theme that has been done to death by the Austens and the Advaitas of the literary world but the unusual milieu and the author's deft pen open secret vistas into the world of British Asian Muslim women that virtually beg for deeper exploration.

Full report here Hindu

Reinventing the veil

I’d have plucked Love in a Headscarf (LIH) off any shelf in the world had it not been for R robbing me of the pleasure by plain handing me the book and demanding a review. Why?

Love in a Headscarf 
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
Amaryllis; Rs295; Pp 288

Cute pink cover, neon blue embossed type, my kind of unpretentious intellectual come-hither. And I’d have read it even if I weren’t reviewing it. Why? One riveting line in the blurb. “At the age of thirteen, I knew that I was destined to marry John Travolta.” That did it. It accosted me like a childhood friend in a street corner in Antigua or Jhunjhunu and dragged me into the book, hurtling me down 300-odd pages.

Old man Aristotle would have shot himself had he read LIH. After all he carps about plot, and here all the plot you get is a ‘man hunt’ in slow motion. But to call author Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s debut novel just another don’t-want-to-be-single-desperately-want-to-mingle lit is to be decoyed by the cute pink.

Full report here Hindustan Times

‘After DCH, it was salads for a week and after Maqbool mutton’

Yesterday, Rupa launched a new novel, Can’t Die for Size Zero, the story of a 30-year-old professional, Joyeeta Naik, who has no man, no career, not even size on her side. To add to her humiliation, her best friend, Lara, offers to fix her up for a makeover show on TV. Joyeeta’s weight loss journey is studded with experiments with fancy diets and improbable exercises. But will she lose herself in the metamorphosis from XXL to Size Zero?

Mumbai-based author Vrushali Telang who was a TV reporter for a decade, moved to writing and producing shows and has been working as an independent screenwriter for the last couple of years, admits that she was also asked to be a ‘star’ in a makeover show. She refused, but it became the starting point for her first novel.

“Lately, Size Zero has become a major talking point and had me thinking about its trickle-down effect on those on the other side of the fence. I’m comfortable in my own skin, but there are many who aspire to be a Kareena Kapoor,” Telang says, pointing out that while she can understand Kapoor’s motivation given that she’s in the glam business where the camera adds 10 pounds and Size Zero did give her career a boost, it’s not imperative for the girl-next-door to allow herself to be cut down to size so drastically.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Fashionably racy, it is nevertheless not superficial.

Following a global trend, Indian bookshops are overflowing with chick lit and, let’s say, chuck lit. Bridget Jones and budgetary bones—the ailing international publishing industry—seem to have left their mark on Indian writing too. If you are a young writer, you can hardly ignore these developments. You are forced to adopt a chatty, on-the-ball style, then try to do what you can with, or despite, it.

In Balloonists, Rajorshi Chakraborti does quite a bit with and despite it. Fashionably racy, it is nevertheless not superficial. Dev, a British-Asian writer in London, is informed by his (current live-in) girlfriend that she’s pregnant. This launches the novel precisely, setting the context, pointing into the narrative, as is evident from the first sentence: “Upon learning of my girlfriend’s missed period and the subsequent result of a home-pregnancy test, my way of absorbing the information was to leave London without warning to visit a ninety-something-year-old lady in Munich....” The old lady is the feisty great-aunt of Dev’s ex-girlfriend, and when the ex-girlfriend disappears, Dev has to team up with Rodrigo (the man she had left him for) to find her. The disaster-ridden search of these two incompatible men manages to keep the reader captivated. Chakraborti knows what he is doing, and escapes cliches just when he seems to be wading into them. For instance, this about a fit of temper: “It doesn’t sound very nice recollected in tranquillity, but that is frequently a problem with emotion.”

Full review here Outlook

When chick-lit is a guy thing

About the time Sex And The City was being released in theatres, a popular joke among men was that watching the film with their wives would be the ultimate agnee pariksha (a walk through fire). Survivors of that experience would be nominated for the ‘best husband award’.

Cinematic therapy works differently on both sexes. Watching Carrie Bradshaw and friends’ desires, sexual fantasies and lives unfold in New York city is one thing. Admiring Robert Patrick strolling coolly through fire, dodging bullets in The Terminator is something else.

The charms of literature work similarly. Chick-lit and dude-lit are probably the most egoistical bedfellows on a bookshelf. Both have their devoted readers. But for some strange reason, men are expected to read only one of them, while it’s considered acceptable for women to read both.

Then there’s the ‘literature infidel’. And ladies and gentlemen, it’s a he. The same man who will make faces at the bookstore billing counter when he spots his wife’s shopping basket overflowing with Mills & Boon, Nicholas Sparks and Helen Fielding. The same man who will check out the back-covers of those books after his wife is asleep. The same man who will resume his disapproval once she wakes up the next morning.

Full report here DNA

Advaita Kala turns to scriptwrting

A media report suggests the Almost Single author, Advaita Kala will turn to scriptwriting for Bollywood. While she apparently refused to divulge any details, apart from the fact that it is romantic comedy (what mainstream Bollywood isn't), and that it will be ready in April.

The author claimed she did not watch movies and "that's what makes it so interesting. The story, about the Indian Gen Next, is not based in India. It is like the stuff I write."

Almost Single, which is a semi-autobiographical take on the life on a 20-something hotel executive (Kala worked for the hospitality sector earlier), came out in 2007. She has since been promoting book, which was one of the first chicklit to be published in India, besides working on a sequel.